iPhone Photo App Rundown

Eleven years ago I made a mustache collage of myself that delighted many of friends and future friends. It took half a day or maybe more using some free photo editing software. It may have been Gimp or maybe something that came with my printer, but I’m not 100% sure now.

**The collage that led to many great friendships**

Today, using free software in my phone, I could make a similar collage in 5 minutes or less. I didn’t realize it until about 6 months ago how much I can do with just a few free apps. I never really spent much time looking beyond the standard apps everyone knows (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, What’s App, etc.) into all the apps you can create with.

Then almost a year ago, I started making more of a concerted effort to find out what was out there. For me, I like stuff that lets me satisfy creative urges easily without spending hours and hours. Today, I am making cool photo and video projects and art and mostly soundless animations because I have yet to find a sound app that I really like. It takes me minutes, not hours and provides a much needed creative outlet.

I think there is a huge future in phone art and I am excited to see it and how it evolves. I do hope that more control will be allowed for controlling the quality of the images to allow for more professional quality work, but even now there is a ton of stuff being created. The future seems bright minus the gap of good free sound editing apps. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for sound editing apps for iPhones please leave it in the comments.

In any case, a few folks have asked about what I am using and so here is a list of my “goto” apps. And some examples of pieces I’ve created with them.

Layout from Instagram

It is a deceptively boring app, but the trick is to feed images you created back into it. Pretty quickly you can end up with repeating images that are super rad. Objects repeated over and over can become textures and colors and you can toy with infinity which is always fun until God smites you. Also being able to pinch zoom individual sections of the image make getting things the right size a breeze. You can also mirror and reverse images to interesting effect.

**Repeated images of peanut butter on a spoon with different lightings and fed through Layouts multiple times**

**Using mirroring and reversing of the same image of a poptart to create interesting patterns**

Collageable

I use Collageable as a backup for Instagram’s Layout. It provides some features that Layout doesn’t provide. For example, I like black borders which for some odd reason Layout doesn’t provide. It also provides some other layouts which can be nice as well.

imgPlay

This is a quick app to put a bunch of images together into a video or animated GIF. You can make stop motion looking videos with just a few images and control the speed. I liked this app enough to pay for it to remove the watermarking. It was a $1.99 well spent.

A shadow dance off with a stick pterodactyl

imaengine

An easy way to make yourself look like a comic by vectorizing your image. You can also shoot video realtime though not unexpectedly it eats your battery quick. That said it is so worth it! This is another one of the few apps that I have paid for and I am quite happy with the purchase.

Captions

The usability could be better, but I haven’t found anybody with the same fonts that look so comic bookish. Ultimately, I paid for it though feel that for the price it should offer better usability. The image size and layout controls are a bit frustrating and lacking. Typically I do layouts in another program and then will go into Captions and take advantage of the text bubbles and some of the effects the app provides. Even that is frustrating as the font resets with each text bubble. That said, the images look great when finished so I can’t complain too much.

**Text bubble “gobbles” added to turkeys for Thanksgiving**

Effects Cam

This app is kind of a pain in the ass to use, but if you like explosions you’ll deal with it. It’s not quite good enough for me to buy a paid version, especially since I don’t make a ton of explosion art, but it does get me by when I need some explosions. Combined with imaengine, you can create more cartoonish looking explosions which are a little more my style.

Combined explosions from Effects with lasers drawn with Adobe Draw and stitching it the images together with imgPlay

Snapseed

Snapseed is made by Google. When I use it, I wish there was a desktop version for my mac. It is a great app for all your general image editing needs. It is super easy to use and makes my life incredibly easier. Brightness, contrast, cropping, vignettes, various filters, overlays, etc. are all there and the interface is quick to learn and incredibly easy to use.

Splice

I use Splice for audio editing. I am not crazy about it, partially because I feel it requires more time than I have to learn it. I like a few of the sound effects, but feel like I just want to use those over and over again. Except for those, the sound editing just feels like it still takes a little too much effort to get the sounds I want and the interface is a little hard to use. At some point, I’ll jump back into it, as I do feel like it deserves a 2nd chance. I’m optimistic that sound editing can be easier so excited to see what they come up with and how the app progresses.

Example of a video where sound has been added with Splice

Adobe Draw

It is oddly difficult to find apps that let you draw on images on your phone. Accuracy on a touchscreen is not easy as well which can make it difficult to create the effects you may want. That said, some may have more patience than I do and for that Adobe Draw seems like a good place to start.